When anger plays the juror the result is mayhem

ON TERROR

Once again some areas in Europe were bloodied. Once again some people were killed. Once again strong action was being planned. Once again words and more words of condemnation flowed. Once again everything will be forgotten. And once again the demon of hatred will be back in another continent and will soil parts of it because the malaise needs curative and not palliative measures. Hatred isn’t a headache that can be treated with pills. It’s a sore that needs surgery.

The other day the Dutch police arrested a man, suspected of shooting dead three people and wounding five, on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht.

Your guess is right. The killer and the killed belong to different religions.

The Utrecht police announced the suspect, a 37-year-old guy, had been taken into custody.

The father of the suspect said his son should be punished if found responsible, a Turkish news agency reported.

“If he did it he must be punished,” the DHA agency quoted his father as saying after what Dutch officials said was likely a terror attack.

We can never deny the fact that to be heard and understood is everyman’s ultimate desire because existence was designed essentially to be a shared pleasure...

His father revealed he had lost contact with his son having returned to his homeland in 2008 after divorcing his wife, DHA reported.

The city was put into lockdown after the shooting, shortly after the morning rush hour, which authorities initially said was an apparent terrorist attack. Police conducted raids in several locations.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte convened crisis talks immediately after the incident.

In my humble opinion, it’s time we looked beyond just penal action. After all, violent crises involve human beings.   

The politicians especially in the West — because they are more powerful — have no choice but to move away from the hackneyed belief that the answer lies only in crackdowns. That’s true, but up to a point because there could always be an outside chance that those targeted by the authorities could have a point. (The pope went to see his assassin. We mustn’t underestimate the lesson in that visit).

Regular crackdowns can harden people because one bullet kills one person but leaves hundreds, sometimes thousands, angry and every wrong thing happens when anger plays the juror and revenge the witness. Therefore, serious attempts should also be made to hear out the negative forces.

We can never deny the fact that to be heard and understood is everyman’s ultimate desire because existence was designed essentially to be a shared pleasure and not a lusty, a self-serving and an ethically unilluminated harlot.

Attackers, like the above, are products of our society, which to say the least is highly civilised. Can we deny that? No. We are making machines do our work and we can’t make human beings love each other? That’s hard to believe.